Rating System – Past and Present

As I, Alex the Maine Pumpkin, am flying solo this year, I’ve switched up the scoring, and done away with all subcategories other than “Overall”. The qualities that are taken into account for this score include aroma, taste, spicing, ratio and quality of pumpkin to the beer style, and if I just plain like it or not.

In our first 3 seasons (2012-2014), we stuck to this scoring table:

Aroma/Appearance (AA): Marks out of ten (one being bad, ten being exceptionally awesome), we’re looking for a pleasant but not overpowering pumpkin spice aroma plus additional spices where appropriate, and for appropriate head retention, lacing and body for the beverage type. We’ll describe all this, and the color and general appearance of the drink.

Taste/Mouthfeel (TM): Marks out of ten (one being bad, ten exceptionally awesome), we’ll be describing the overall taste of the beer, and the mouthfeel and thickness, and evaluating these.

Pumpkininess (P): Our own scale, this purely rates the pumpkin levels of the beer. Rating of one to ten pumpkins, with one pumpkin being “this is so un-pumpkiny that this isn’t really a pumpkin beer” to ten being “liquid pumpkin and little else”. So this scale is NOT rating on the good/bad scale, it is intended to give you a hand finding the level of pumpkin for your own tastes. Because some of us want “pumpkin”, and some of us want “PUMPKINNNNNN!”

Overall (O): With sixty-one beers to rate, we’ll be scoring them overall on a 100 point scale, 90-100 being “world class”, 80-90 being “very good”, 70-80 being “good” 50-70 being “average”, and below 50 being “probably best leave this one on the shelf unless there isn’t another pumpkin beer in the store”.

It should also be noted that we do NOT discuss the reviews and instead put up the posts blind, so when one of us posts our review on Twitter, that is the first time the other will read it! There is a strict “no talking about the beer until we post” rule. Anyhoo, this is all just intended as a fun guide to this most wonderful season of beverages. Play along, and we’d love to hear your reviews too! Cheers!
Nic and Alex